A spokesperson for the pharmaceutical giant told CBC News that severe winter weather in the United States would delay a scheduled shipment of the Pfizer vaccine to Canada for at least one day this week.
Global shipping company United Parcel Service (UPS) has temporarily closed WorldPort, a mega air cargo hub, at the Louisville Mohammed Ali International Airport in Kentucky due to heavy snow and ice construction.
Pfizer is shipping the vaccine by air from the Purs facility in Belgium to Louisville in Canada.
“Unfortunately, bad weather in the US caused a slight delay in today’s delivery,” Pfizer spokeswoman Christina Antonio said in an email. As a result, deliveries scheduled for today will be delayed by one day. “”
Antonio said deliveries “stay on schedule” on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
“We are doing our best to minimize delays and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience,” Antonio said.
This is the first time UPS has closed its cargo terminal, which processes over 400,000 packages in an hour.
Winter weather eruptions have caused the United States to report the massively frozen, low temperatures ever reported in the central and southern states.
In a statement sent via email, Health Canada said that due to UPS weather disturbances, provinces can now expect their shipments to arrive 24 to 36 hours later than planned.
A spokesman for the ministry said, “Public Health Canada’s national operations center is currently monitoring the status of both the manufacturer and the joint parcel service.”
“Updates and quantities for delivery schedules are shared with the regime on a daily basis to inform their decisions about vaccination programs in their jurisdictions.”
A spokesman for Ontario’s Department of Health said Pfizer product shipments were being pushed back later in the week due to “a major storm in North America / Central Canada”.
“For Pfizer shipments in the fifteenth week of February, there will be a delay of one day from the scheduled delivery dates. The telecast is now scheduled to come on Wednesday 17 February and Thursday 18 February, ”the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. .
major General. Military commander Danny Fortin, who oversees vaccine logistics at the Canadian Public Health Agency, warns that unexpected weather events may disrupt vaccine delivery, but the country is prepared for all of these scenarios.
Anand said that after weeks of delays and cancellations, more than 400,000 Pfizer rounds would reach this week to close the abandoned Canadian vaccination campaign and hundreds of additional doses would be shipped each week for the foreseeable future.
Conservative leader Erin O’Toole today pushed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau into the House of Commons deadline for the introduction of the Vibratory vaccine in Canada and asked when the country could vaccinate 300,000 people a day.
With 1.5 million doses less than the date, Canada will need to administer more than 265,000 doses per day for the next 226 days to fully immunize 30 million people on a two-dose schedule by the end of September.
Trudeau said that any Canadian who wanted the shot would have one by the end of the month – a message he reiterated today in the House of Commons.
He added that the country would be in a “big lift” phase of rollout in the coming weeks, with Modern and Pfizer’s dramatic increases.
The New York-based company will distribute 10.8 million rounds between April and June, with four million Pfizer rounds coming before the end of the quarter. There are 2.8 million more shots during this period than the government originally expected.
Commenting on Trudeau’s September promise, Ottole said, “We don’t know if we’ll actually get all the doses we promised. There’s still a lot of uncertainty and we’ll believe it when we see it.”
According to Oxford’s Our World data, Canada ranks 41st in the world for administered vaccines – behind the US, Britain and some middle-income countries such as Turkey and Serbia.
Canada’s vaccination efforts so far have outpaced other countries including Bahrain, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and the United Arab Emirates.
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